Tag Archives: Turkey

The first rule of strategy

The first rule of strategy is to keep your opponent busy attending to your agenda so he has no time to advance his own. Unfortunately, Israel’s leaders seem unaware of this rule, while Iran’s rulers triumph in its application.

Over the past few weeks, Israel has devoted itself entirely to the consideration of questions that are, at best, secondary. Questions like how much additional assistance Israel should provide Hamas-controlled Gaza, and how best to fend off or surrender to the international diplomatic lynch mob have dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s and his senior ministers’ agendas. Our political leaders – as well as our military commanders and intelligence agencies – have been so busy thinking about these issues that they have effectively forgotten the one issue that they should have been considering.

Israel’s greatest strategic challenge – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – has fallen by the wayside.

In the shadow of our distraction, Iran and its allies operate undisturbed. Indeed, as our leaders have devoted themselves entirely to controlling the damage from the Iranian-supported, Turkish- Hamas flotilla, Iran and its allies have had a terrific past few weeks.

True, Wednesday the UN Security Council passed a new sanctions resolution against Iran for refusing to end its illicit uranium enrichment program. But that Security Council resolution itself is emblematic of Iran’s triumph.

It took a year for US President Barack Obama to decide that he should seek additional sanctions against Iran. It then took him another six months to convince Iran’s allies Russia and China to support the sanctions. In the event, the sanctions that Obama refers to as "the most comprehensive sanctions that the Iranian government has faced," will have no impact whatsoever on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
They will not empower the Iranian people to overthrow their regime. And they will not cause the Iranian regime to reconsider its nuclear weapons program. They won’t even prevent Russia from supplying Iran with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to protect its nuclear installations from air assault.

THOSE LONG-awaited and utterly worthless sanctions underline the fact that life is terrific these days for Iran’s leaders and their allies. A year ago, the Iranian regime was hanging by a thread. After stealing the presidential elections last June 12, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss Ali Khamenei required the assistance of all their regime goons to put down the popular revolt against them. Indeed, they needed to import Hizbullah goons from Lebanon to protect themselves and their regime from their own people. European leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy were openly supporting the Iranian people as they announced their intention to overthrow the regime.

But then Obama sided with the regime against its domestic, democratic opposition. Intent on giving his appeasement policy a whirl, Obama took several days to express even the mildest support for the Iranian people. In the meantime, his spokesman continued to refer to the regime as the "legitimate" government of Iran.

Obama’s support for Ahmadinejad forced European leaders like Sarkozy to temper their support for the anti-regime activists. Even worse, by keeping the democracy protesters at arm’s length, Obama effectively gave a green light to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to resort to brute force against them. That is, by failing to back the democracy protesters, Obama convinced the regime it could get away with murdering scores of them, and torturing thousands more.

A year on, although the regime’s opponents seethe under the surface, with no leader and no help from the free world, it will take a miracle for them to mount major protests on the one-year anniversary of the stolen elections. It is unimaginable that they will be able to topple the regime before it gets its hands on nuclear weapons.

A year ago Ahmadinejad was afraid to show his face in public. But this week he received a hero’s welcome in Istanbul. He had a bilateral meeting there not only with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

In the past year Iran has deepened its strategic ties with China and Russia. It has developed an open strategic alliance with Turkey. It has expanded its strategic web of alliances in Latin America. Now in addition to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, Iran counts Brazil among its allies.

THEN THERE is Lebanon. Like the regime in Teheran, Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hizbullah lost the Lebanese elections last June. And like the regime in Teheran, Hizbullah was able to use force and the threat of force to not only strong-arm its way back into the Lebanese government, but to guarantee itself control over the Lebanese government.

Now in control, with Iranian and Syrian support, Hizbullah has an arsenal of 42,000 missiles with ranges that cover all of Israel.

Then, too, Hizbullah’s diplomatic situation has never been better. This week former US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker called for the US to initiate a policy of diplomatic outreach to the Iranian-controlled illegal terrorist group. Ryan is the second prominent US official, after Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, to call for the US to accept Hizbullah as a legitimate actor in the region.
As for Syria, it too has only benefited from its alliance with Iran. The Obama administration has waived several trade sanctions against Damascus.

As it battles the Senate to confirm its choice for US ambassador to Syria, the administration has become the regime’s champion.

Assuming the Senate drops its opposition, Syria will receive the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years as it defies the International Atomic Energy Agency and openly proliferates nuclear technology. Today Syria is both rebuilding its illicit nuclear reactor at Dar Alzour that Israel reportedly destroyed on Sept. 6, 2007 and building additional nuclear installations.

Luckily for Bashar Assad, the IAEA is too busy trying to coerce Israel into agreeing to international inspections of its legal nuclear installations to pay any attention. Since June 2008, the IAEA has carried out no inspections in Syria.

AND THAT’S the heart of the matter. The main reason that the past year has been such a good one for Iran and its allies is because they have managed to keep Israel so busy fending off attacks that Jerusalem has had no time to weaken them in any way.

It is true that much of the fault here belongs to the US. Since entering office, Obama has demonstrated daily that his first priority in the Middle East is to force Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. As for Iran, Obama’s moves to date make clear that his goal is not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, it is to avoid being blamed for Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Obama has used Iran’s nuclear weapons program – and vague promises to do something about it – as a means of coercing Israel into making unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians.

The problem is that despite overwhelming evidence that Obama is fundamentally not serious about preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel’s leaders have played along with him. And in so doing they have lost control over their time and their agenda.

When Obama first came into office, he was committed to three things: appeasing Iran, attacking Israel for constructing homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria, and condemning Israel for refusing to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Obama was only partially dissuaded from appeasing Iran when Ahmadinejad rejected his offer to enrich uranium for the mullahs last December. As for his other goals, he coerced Netanyahu into agreeing to support Palestinian statehood last June and coerced him into ending Jewish home building in Judea and Samaria last September.

Ahmadinejad’s rejection of Obama’s outstretched hand forced Obama to launch his halfhearted drive for worthless UN sanctions. But he used this bid to coerce Israel into making still more unreciprocated concessions. After pocketing the prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, Obama moved on to Jerusalem.

From there he moved to forcing Israel to accept indirect negotiations with the Palestinians through his hostile envoy George Mitchell. And once he had pocketed that concession, he began pressuring Israel to surrender its purported nuclear arsenal.

Following that, he has moved on to his current position of pressuring Israel to accept a hostile international investigation of the navy’s enforcement of Israel’s lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. He also seeks to weaken Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza and force Israel to accept a massive infusion of US assistance to Hamas-controlled Gaza.

This last Obama action plan was made explicit on Wednesday when the US president announced that his administration would give $400 million in assistance to Gaza, despite the fact that doing so involves providing material aid to an illegal terrorist organization controlled by Iran.

OBAMA’S ACTIONS are clearly disturbing, but as disturbing as they are, they are not Israel’s main problem. Iran’s nuclear program is Israel’s main problem. And Netanyahu, his senior cabinet ministers and the IDF high command should not be devoting their precious time to dealing with Obama and his ever-escalating demands.

To free himself and Israel’s other key decisionmakers to contend with Iran, Netanyahu must outsource the handling of the Palestinian issue, the Obama administration and all the issues arising from both. He must select someone outside active politics to serve as his special envoy for this purpose.

Netanyahu’s envoy’s position should be the mirror image of Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell’s role. He should be given a suite of fancy offices, several deputies and aides and spokesmen, and a free hand in talking with the Palestinians and the Obama administration until the cows come home.
In the meantime, Netanyahu and his senior cabinet ministers and advisers must devote themselves to battling Iran. They must not merely prepare to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

They must prepare the country to weather the Iranian counter-attack that will surely follow.

Those preparations involve not only fortifying Israel’s home front. Netanyahu and his people must prepare a diplomatic and legal offensive against Iran and its allies in the lead-up, and aftermath, of an Israeli strike against Iran.

The most obviously qualified person to fill this vital role is former defense minister Moshe Arens.
Aren has the experience, wisdom and gravitas to handle the job. Bereft of all political ambitions, Arens would in no way pose a threat to Netanyahu’s leadership.

Whoever Netanyahu chooses, he must choose quickly. His failure to bear in mind the first law of strategy places Israel in greater and greater peril with each passing day.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Turkey’s cozy business with Iran

It becomes more apparent all the time that Turkey is a foe in the War for the Free World, between the forces of freedom and liberty and the forces of Shariah law and Jihad.

Actually, if you were to ask most Greeks they would have told you years ago that the Turks were an enemy not to be trusted, especially since Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in the mid-1970s. But Turkey’s recent activities drive the point home.

For many people, the first clue that Turkey was no longer a true ally of the U.S. and the rest of NATO (of which Turkey is a member) came back in 2003 when the Turkish parliament refused to grant the coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein permission to launch a northern front from its territory into Iraq.

As a result of Turkey’s disloyalty, the advanced 4th Mechanized Infantry Division had to sail around the Arabian peninsula to Kuwait to join the fight. As a direct result of Turkey’s actions, American GIs lost their lives. Turkey’s actions deprived the coalition with a mechanized thrust into the Sunni Triangle area of Iraq-a powerful thrust that could have done much to inhibit the development of the insurgency there.

More recently, Turkey betrayed another former ally, Israel, by sanctioning a blockade running flotilla toward Israeli waters, precipitating a violent incident in which nine Turks lost their lives. As part of the fallout from this episode it has been revealed that the Turkish Islamic charity IHH is involved in supporting the terrorist organization HAMAS.  This should not actually come as much of a surprise since IHH is part of Jihadist terrorist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s "Union of Good." The "Union of Good" is an umbrella group of 53 Islamic charities based out of Saudi Arabia most noted for having been designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury Department.

But perhaps the most startling evidence that Turkey is an enemy and not an ally is the corporate life support that it gives the Ayatollahs in Iran.

Many nations allow their corporate citizens to conduct business in and with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but one Turkish company in particular has provided an array of services that has benefited Iran’s military posture and allowed the Iranians to pose a clear and present danger to the Free World.

STFA Group is a Turkish engineering and construction conglomerate that builds everything from port facilities and energy industry infrastructure, to naval vessels and high-tech electronics. STFA has completed projects in Iran for government entities-projects that could enable Iran to threaten the flow of oil in the Persian Gulf and enrich itself in meantime.

 

Exhibit A: STFA did extensive infrastructure work on three ports for the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Transportation and the Iran Ports and Shipping Organization:

1. Jask. At the port of Jask near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, STFA constructed a breakwater and quay which provide shelter for an Iranian naval base. (Click the images below to englarge.)

2. Queshm. The port of Queshm on the island of the same name sits on one of the flanks of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a major portion of the world’s oil must flow. STFA built a breakwater and quay for the port, which the Iranians use as a base for Silkworm anti-ship missiles:

Iran has deployed Chinese HY-2 "Silkworm" anti-ship missiles along the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf, on Abu Musa island, on Qeshm Island and on Sirri Island. In March 1995 US Secretary of Defense William Perry denied speculation on the possible existence of Iranian chemical weapons on the islands.

Qeshm Island is the largest island in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Persian Gulf. With an area of 1445 km2, a circumference of approximately 362 km, and a length of 122 km, the northern coast of the island is covered with mangrove forests. Qeshm island is located along the Iranian mainland, at one point only about 1.8 km distant from the mainland, and Qeshm City is about 22 km from Bandar Abbas.

3. Bandar Lengeh. STFA also constructed breakwaters and quays near the harbor of Bandar Lengeh just west of the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Exhibit B: STFA constructed piling works for a jetty on the eastern side of Kharg Island, Iran’s number one oil and gas terminal and a major naval base.

(Click the image below to englarge.)

 

In these strategic projects, Turkey’s STFA is partnering with the Iranian regime that is: 

(i) killing US GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan;

(ii) sponsoring Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and HAMAS, the three worst Jihadist terrorist organizations in the world;

(iii) building intercontinental ballistic missiles to strike around the globe and;

(iv) working to build nuclear weapons in violation of international agreements.

It is clear that Turkey has chosen sides in the war– and it’s not ours.

The plain truth about Israel

In other times, Hearst Newspapers White House Correspondent Helen Thomas’s demand that the Jews "get the hell out of Palestine," and go back to Poland, Germany and America would have been front page news in every newspaper in the US the day after the story broke. 

In other times, had the dean of the White House Correspondents Association expressed such hatred for the Jews, the White House would have immediately removed her accreditation rather than wait three days to criticize her. 
In other times, the White House Correspondents Association would have expelled her.  In other times, her employer – Hearst Newspapers – would have fired her. 
But in our times, it took days for anyone other than Jews and conservatives to condemn Thomas’s vile statements to Rabbi David Nesenoff. And she was not fired. She was allowed to retire.
Our times are times of Jew hatred. Our times are times where hatred breeds strategic madness. Our times are times when we need to recall basic truths about Israel and the Jewish people. Specifically, we must remember that the US is privileged to count Israel as an ally – whether Americans like Jews and our state or hate us. 
This week, Anthony Cordesman from respected Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies joined the bandwagon of Israel bashers. In an article titled, "Israel as a Strategic Liability?" 
Cordesman asserted that Israel "is a tertiary US strategic interest." And given its alleged insignificance, Israel must "become far more careful about the extent to which it test[s] the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews."
Cordesman argued that Israel is only an asset to the US when it is giving its land away to its neighbors. He called for Israel to constrain its military actions and demanded that Israel "not conduct a high-risk attack on Iran in the face of the clear US ‘red light’ from both the Bush and Obama administrations."
The fact that Cordesman’s article reflects an increasingly popular school of thought in the US is not testimony to its accuracy. Indeed, his arguments are completely wrong.
The plain truth is that Israel is the US’s greatest strategic asset in the Middle East. Indeed, given the strategic importance of the Middle East to the US national security, Israel is arguably the US’s greatest strategic asset outside the US military.
Cordesman allows that "Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States." But he fails to recognize the strategic implications of that statement. As a democracy, unlike every Arab state, the US does not need to worry a change in leadership in Jerusalem will cause Israel to abandon its alliance with the US. This of course is what happened in Iran – which until 1979, was the US’s most important ally in the Persian Gulf. As Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak ages, the US faces the prospect of a post-Mubarak Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood similarly abandoning its alliance with America. 
The fact that the US and Israel share the same foundational values also guarantees that the alliance is stable. No government in Jerusalem will ever sway the Israeli people away from America as has happened in Turkey since the Islamist Erdogan government took office in 2002. 
Cordesman grudgingly allowed that Israel provides intelligence to the US. But he refused to acknowledge how important Israel’s intelligence has been for the US. Since Sept. 11, 2001, US military and intelligence officials have repeatedly admitted that Israeli intelligence has been worth its weight in gold for US security operations in the region and around the world. 
Cordesman also noted that Israeli technology has contributed to US defense, but again, he undervalued its significance. The very fact that pilotless aircraft – first developed by Israel – are the lead force in the US campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan gives lie to his tepid admission of Israel’s technological contribution to US security.
Like many on the Left, Cordesman ignored the fact that Israel’s enemies are the US’s enemies. But his failure to note that the same people who call for Israel to be destroyed also call for the US to be destroyed does not make this fact any less true. And since the US and Israel share the same foes, when Israel is called on to fight its enemies, its successes redound to the US’s benefit.
In many ways, Israel – which has never asked the US to fight its wars — has been the catalyst for the US’s greatest triumphs. It was the Mossad that smuggled out Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech acknowledging Stalin’s crimes at the Twentieth Communist Party Conference in 1956. The publication of Khrushchev’s speech in the West was the first turning point in the Cold War. 
So too, Israel’s June 1982 destruction of Syria’s Soviet-made anti-aircraft batteries and the Syrian air force was the first clear demonstration of the absolute superiority of US military technology over Soviet military technology. Many have argued that it was this Israeli demonstration of Soviet technological inferiority that convinced the Reagan administration it was possible to win the Cold War.
Beyond politics and ideology, beyond friendship and values, the US has three permanent national security interests in the Middle East.
  • Ensuring the smooth flow of affordable petroleum products from the region.
  • Preventing the most radical regimes, sub-state and non-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.
  • Maintaining its capacity to project its power in the region. 
A strong Israel is the best guarantor of all of these interests. Indeed, the stronger Israel is, the more secure these primary American interests are. Three permanent and unique aspects to Israel’s regional position dictate this state of affairs. 
First, as the first target of the most radical regimes and radical sub-state actors in the region, Israel has a permanent, existential interest in preventing these regimes and sub-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm. 
Israel’s 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite US condemnation at the time, the US later acknowledged that the strike was a necessary precondition to the success of Operation Desert Storm ten years later. As Richard Cheney has noted, if Iraq had been a nuclear power in 1991, the US would have been hard pressed to eject Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and so block his regime from asserting control over oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. 
Second, Israel is a non-expansionist state and its neighbors know it. In its 62 year history, Israel has only controlled territory vital for its national security and territory that was legally allotted to it in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate which has never been abrogated or superseded.
Israel’s strength, which it has used only in self-defense, is inherently non-threatening. Far from destabilizing the region, a strong Israel stabilizes the Middle East by deterring the most radical actors from attacking. 
In 1970, Israel blocked Syria’s bid to use the PLO to overthrow the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel’s threat to attack Syria not only saved the Hashemites then, it has deterred Syria from attempting to overthrow the Jordanian regime ever since. 
Similarly, Israel’s neighbors understand that its purported nuclear arsenal is a weapon of national survival and hence they view it as non-threatening. This is the reason Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal has never spurred a regional nuclear arms race. 
In stark contrast, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, a regional nuclear arms race will ensue immediately. Indeed, it has already begun. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other states have all signed contracts to develop nuclear installations. 
Although they will never admit it, Israel’s non-radical neighbors feel more secure when Israel is strong. On the other hand, the region’s most radical regimes and non-state actors will always seek to emasculate Israel. 
Finally, since as the Jewish state Israel is the regional bogeyman, no Arab state will agree to form an open alliance with it. Hence, Israel will never be in a position to join forces with another nation against a third nation. 
In contrast, the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic of the 1960s was formed to attack Israel. Today, the Syrian-Iranian-Turkish alliance is an inherently aggressive alliance against Israel and the non-radical Arab states in the region. Recognizing the stabilizing force of a strong Israel, the moderate states of the region prefer for Israel to remain strong. 
From the US’s perspective, far from impairing its alliance-making capabilities in the region, by providing military assistance to Israel, America isn’t just strengthening the most stabilizing force in the region. It is showing all states and non-state actors in the greater Middle East it is trustworthy. 
But every time the US seeks to attenuate its ties with Israel, it is viewed as an untrustworthy ally by the nations of the Middle East. US hostility towards Israel causes Israel’s neighbors to hedge their bets by distancing themselves from the US lest America abandon them to their neighboring adversaries.
The Obama administration’s willingness to effectively back Turkey and Hamas against Israel at the UN Security Council last week forced Vice President Joseph Biden to drop everything and fly to Egypt this week. Watching the US abandon Israel and strengthen the most radical actors in the region, the Egyptians are terrified that they can no longer believe in US security guarantees. 
A strong Israel empowers the relatively moderate actors in the region to stand up to the radical actors in the region because they trust Israel to keep the radicals in check. When Israel is weakened the radical forces are emboldened. Regional stability is thrown asunder. Wars become more likely. Attacks on oil resources increase. The most radical sub-state actors and regimes are encouraged to strike. 
Cordesman claims that Israel only advances US strategic interest when it works towards the creation of a Palestinian state. But this is wrong. To the extent that the two-state solution assumes that Israel must contract itself to within the indefensible 1949 ceasefire lines and allow a hostile Palestinian state allied with terrorist organizations to take power in the areas it vacates, the two-state solution is predicated on making Israel weak and empowering radicals. In light of this, the two-state solution as presently constituted is antithetical to America’s most vital strategic interests in the Middle East. 
In our times, when Jew hatred has become acceptable and strategic blindness and madness are presented as nuanced sophistication, it is essential to maintain a firm grip on the truth. And that truth is that love the Jews or hate us, the US’s alliance with Israel has been and remains America’s most cost-effective national security investment since World War II.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

No worse friend, no better enemy

Generations of U.S. Marines have exemplified the motto "No better friend, no worse enemy" with their unstinting dependability in the face of adversity, and their ferocity in combat.  To the extent that the country as a whole has hewed to these time-tested principles, the world has been made more stable and American interests more secure.

In its time in office, however, the Obama administration has increasingly turned that formula on its head.  The message of its policies and conduct is as unmistakable as it is ominous:  Better to be an enemy of the United States than its friend.

Consider, for example, the starkly contrasting treatment associated with two recent episodes at sea.  In the first, a North Korean submarine engaged in an act of war when it covertly torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel on March 21, resulting in the latter’s sinking with the loss of 46 lives.

The second occurred last week when Israeli commandoes, acting lawfully in enforcing a declared naval blockade, intercepted a Turkish ship determined to violate it.  Upon boarding the vessel, they were set upon by a mob comprised, it turns out, of weapon-wielding jihadists – not humanitarian-minded "peace activists."  The commandoes defended themselves, killing nine of the would-be "martyrs."

To date, there has been no UN resolution denouncing the first.  No calls for an international investigation.  No talk of retaliation by the so-called "community of nations" if the perpetrator does not recant and make amends.

By contrast, the UN Security Council was immediately "seized" with the second.  It adopted in short order a resolution condemning those responsible (read, the Israelis) and demanded an international investigation.  Given the predictable hostility of virtually any "international" participants in such an inquiry, the result can only be a new basis for vilifying  Israel, and for insisting that it ends the blockade of Gaza – something the Obama administration seems to be preparing to support.

To what can the very different treatment of the two naval incidents by the "international community" be attributed?  That’s easy: Principally it reflects the fact that North Korea has as its greatest friend Communist China, while Pyongyang considers the United States to be its main enemy.  Beijing does not want the UN (or, for that matter, anybody else) challenging or otherwise calling into question the legitimacy of its ally’s actions.  The United States has no intention of upsetting the PRC – what with all the "help" Team Obama keeps hoping the Chinese will provide on sanctions on Iran, trade, currency revaluation, the "Six-Party talks," etc., etc.

By contrast, Israel has traditionally had but one powerful friend: the United States.  This alliance has been all the more important since most of the rest of the world is at least somewhat, if not actually rabidly, hostile towards the Jewish State.  Under President Obama, however, Israel seems to have in the U.S. a friend in name only. American diplomacy did nothing to prevent passage of the Security Council’s condemnatory resolution, focusing instead on making UN’s criticism of the Jewish State a tad more oblique.

Regrettably, the Obama administration’s complicity in the latest UN-administered assault on Israel is but one manifestation of a troubling pattern.  It follows months of Washington-induced turmoil over: housing construction permits in Jerusalem, U.S. demands for Israeli concessions that ostensibly would resuscitate the so-called "peace process" and the humiliation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his last visit to Washington. 

Then, the United States supported a deeply problematic final document at the just-completed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference.  In the process, Team Obama pledged to support a conference in 2012 whose stated purpose is to denuclearize Israel, but says nothing about Iran.  Here again, the administration acquiesced to better treatment for America’s enemies than for its friends.

Sadly, other allies – including Britain, Honduras, Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Ukraine, India and Colombia – have also been given short shrift (or worse) by an Obama administration much more interested in cultivating ties with nations that are, at the very least, unfriendly.  In addition to Communist China, the objects of such "engagement" efforts have included the unsavory regimes in Russia, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Cuba and Venezuela.  Another intense – and appalling – "outreach" effort involves the Muslim Brotherhood’s international arm, the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Of particular concern is the evident ascendancy within the Obama administration of Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan.  A long puff-piece in Sunday’s Washington Post reported that Brennan has "emerged as one of [the President’s] most trusted advisors" and "for all the near misses [that is, attempted terrorist attacks] on his watch… Brennan has grown only more powerful within the White House."  

If true, the President’s worst instincts with respect to America’s enemies and her friends are being reinforced by someone who believes, for example, that the "moderates" of Hezbollah can safely be treated as among the latter.  The result can only be a more dangerous world for all who love freedom, and a further diminishing of the one country they still hope will protect them.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

Israel’s daunting task

The ferocity and speed of the current international assault on Israel has left the government in a daze. Statements from our leadership are marked by confusion. This reaction is understandable. Everywhere Israel turns it is met with hostility.

Turkey — which just a decade ago was Israel’s most important regional ally – has taken a leadership position next to Iran in the Islamist and global assault against the Jewish state.

Under President Barack Obama’s stewardship, the US has joined the international bandwagon against Israel. Ireland – never a friend — is now openly siding with Hamas against Israel. And as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted on Wednesday evening, Britain, France and Germany and the rest of the Western democracies calling for Israel to end its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza’s coast are effectively arguing that Israel should give Iran – which controls Hamas – a seaport on the Mediterranean.

The footage of the IDF’s celebrated naval commandos falling prey to an Islamic lynch mob on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday morning serves as a perfect simile for the national mood. The commandos boarded the ship armed with paintball guns expecting to be greeted by hostile, but non-violent humanitarian activists. Instead they were accosted by a murderous mob.

Similarly, the Israeli public feels that when we go out of our way to show our peaceful intentions and nature to the world, we are greeted with an international lynch mob. Rather than listen to us, the world shouts us down with mendacious propaganda in act after act of political theater.

In a situation when everything seems hopeless and futile, it is important to take a step back and consider what stands behind the assault. Only by understanding why what is happening is happening will Israel’s leaders be able to formulate a strategy for navigating the country through the current straits.

TODAY’S GLOBAL campaign against the Jewish state is the product of three recent developments: The waning of traditional Arab power relative to the waxing of non-Arab Islamic states including Iran, Pakistan and Turkey; the concomitant rise of anti-Semitic incitement throughout the Islamic world; and the US’s attenuation of its ties with its allies generally and the US abandonment of its support for Israel specifically.

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been the widely recognized leaders of the Islamic world. Over the past several years, their power has diminished and it is now being overwhelmed by the rising non-Arab Islamic states Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

Pakistan – so far the only Islamic country with a nuclear arsenal — is the home base of the wildly popular al Qaida movement. Despite its nuclear and jihadist cachet, Pakistan’s ability to challenge the power of Arab governments is limited. Its financial dependence on Saudi Arabia, its strategic ties with the US and the ongoing war between its government and the Taliban/al Qaida have all rendered Pakistan – for now – unable to compete with the Arab world for the mantle of Islamic leadership.

But Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has helped place Iran on the verge of regional domination. Iran’s long-held nuclear aspirations only became realistic when Pakistan shared its nuclear and ballistic missile technologies with the mullocracy. Iran’s nuclear weapons program is the stick it now wields to coerce the Arab world to bow to its will.

Iran isn’t all about threats and coercion though. It also offers the Arab world an attractive carrot. Since the US invasion of Iraq and even more forcefully since the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah, Iran has taken the lead in fighting the great enemies of the Arab world: the US and Israel.

In 2006, the Arab masses rallied to Iran’s side as Israel fought its Shiite Arab proxy to a draw in Lebanon. Hamas’s willingness to serve as Iran’s Palestinian proxy has given Iran complete control over the most active fronts against the hated Jews.

Since the radical Islamic AKP party took over Turkey in 2003, its leader Prime Minister Recip Erdogan has presided over the thorough brainwashing of the Turkish people. According to repeated polling data, the majority of Turks believe that Israel and America are demonic, murderous nations that kill innocent people for entertainment.

Erdogan has cultivated anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism for two reasons. First, doing so enables him to divert his people’s attention away from his government’s economic failures. Stirred into frenzies of hatred, the Turks willingly rally behind their leader who is saving them from the Jewish and Yankee beasts.

Then there is Erdogan’s goal of reasserting Turkish regional dominance and reclaiming the lost power of the Ottomans as the leader of the Islamic world. His decision in 2006 to be the first world leader to host Hamas terror masters on an official visit after their victory in the Palestinian elections was a clear bid to win popularity for Turkey among the Arab masses.

Iran and Turkey understand that attacking the Jewish state is the fastest route to the top of the Muslim world.

For decades two things limited the salience of Jew hatred as a political force in the Muslim world. First, Israel’s reputation as a regional power deterred Arab states from attacking it. And second, the US’s Middle East policy of rewarding states that lived at peace with Israel and spurning those that did not made attacking Israel a less attractive option for most Muslim states. The likes of Iran and Syria were punished for their support for terrorism and their refusal to make peace with Israel. Then too, Turkey’s rise in prominence in the US in the 1990s owed a great deal to its close strategic ties with Israel.

Israel’s reputation as a regional power was diminished by its 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon and its less than stellar performances in the 2006 war.

As for the US, in the year and a half since Obama took office he has fundamentally restructured US foreign policy in a manner that rewards US enemies at the expense of US allies. From Honduras and Columbia to Britain, Poland, and the Czech Republic, to Japan and India to Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has treated US allies with contempt and hostility. At the same time, his repeated bids to woo US adversaries have rewarded the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Russia and others for their aggression.

Israel of course is the US’s most threatened ally. And Obama’s treatment of Israel has been uniquely shabby– and dangerous. Guided by his ideological worldview which argues that US support for Israel is the root of the Arab and Islamic world’s animus towards the US, Obama has advanced a policy of punishing Israel and wooing its worst enemies that has radically changed the Islamic power calculus. By seeking to appease Iran and Syria for their aggressive behavior and by courting an ever more radical Turkish regime, Obama has humiliated Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel. In so doing, he has convinced the Arabs that the only way to retain and expand their power is by attacking Israel.

THIS BRINGS US to Israel’s current quandary about how to respond to the international campaign against it. Israel of course can do nothing to change the potency of Jew hatred in the Islamic world. It can also do nothing to change American behavior. For as long as Obama is president, US foreign policy can be expected to remain on its current trajectory. That is, for at least the next two and a half years, the US will continue to play a destabilizing and hostile role in the region.

What this means is that Israel should adopt a strategy that minimizes the international lynch mob’s ability to get close to it and maximizes Israel’s ability to knock the mob off balance.

Take for instance the UN Security Council call for an independent investigation of the Mavi Marmara incident. Israel rightly rejected such a UN inquiry understanding that its aim is to diminish Israel’s sovereign right to self defense. On the other hand, on Thursday morning Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman offered that Israel could establish its own judicial inquiry and that there was no reason for international investigators not to be members of the Israeli committee.

This idea is ill-advised for two reasons. First by its very nature, a judicial inquiry would place Israel in the role of criminal defendant. And second, given the nature of the international assault on Israel, no international observers or investigators can be given any role in investigating the Mavi Marmara episode.

In contrast, Israel could benefit from a domestic investigation of the operational and diplomatic aspects of its handling of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla. It is in these areas– rather than the legal areas– that Israel has failed and must learn the lessons of those failures. Moreover, appointing a committee would buy Israel time in the face of the anti-Israel campaign now sweeping the globe.

And as to that campaign, it is time for Israel to launch a counter-offensive. Its representatives at the UN should demand an investigation into Turkey’s illegal sponsorship of the pro-Hamas flotilla. They should raise such protests at every UN forum and continue to protest until they are thrown out of the meetings and then return, the next day to relaunch their protests.

The Justice Ministry should issue international arrest warrants against the flotilla’s organizers and participants and prepare indictments against them for trial in Israeli courts. Israel’s embassies throughout the world should call for their host governments to outlaw organizations involved in the Gaza flotilla movement.

No, these Israeli efforts will not change anyone’s vote in any UN forum. But they will place these wholly corrupt institutions on the defensive. For decades Israel has taken for granted that the UN is hopelessly hostile and left things at that. Israel’s willingness to declare defeat has emboldened UN officials. By putting them on the defensive, Israel will force them to devote time to staving off Israeli attacks and so have less time available for initiating new assaults against Israel.

IN LOS ANGELES on Monday, a crowd of Muslims carrying signs calling for Israel’s destruction gathered outside the Israeli Consulate. As they shouted Allahu Akhbar, a lone Jewish high school student carrying an Israeli flag appeared on the scene. Suddenly, the protesters forgot that they were supposed to be demonstrating against the State of Israel and began threatening this single Jewish boy who held his head high and waved the Israeli flag.

As they converged around him, a cordon of policemen headed them off and surrounded the young Jewish boy who refused to be intimidated. Speaking to reporters, clearly moved by his courage, the boy said, "I came out because I want to defend Israel." Asked if he was affiliated with any group, he responded, "Just Judaism and Israel."

Israel’s task is daunting and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But our cause is great and it is far from lost. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

How wars begin

In hindsight, it will probably be obvious that the missteps of the Obama administration vis a vis Israel were critical catalysts to a war that today seems ever more likely to engulf the Middle East, and perhaps the world more generally. Assuming such an outcome is neither the intention of the President and his team, nor desired by them, American course corrections must be urgently taken.

To be sure, as is often the case in the moment, a different narrative is operating. The rising tensions in the region are widely seen as the fault of the Jewish State. Most recently, Israel is being portrayed as the villain of the bloody interception of a "humanitarian flotilla" bringing relief aid to the Gaza Strip.

Before that, the Jewish State has been serially excoriated for: engaging in: "illegal" construction of homes in Jerusalem; exercising "disproportionate force" in military action in Gaza, including by some accounts "war crimes"; and being intransigent with respect to the sorts of territorial, strategic and political concessions needed to advance the "peace process" with the Palestinians.

In each case, the Obama administration has either strongly endorsed these memes or acted fecklessly to challenge them. Throughout their seventeen months in office, the President and his senior subordinates have been at pains to demonstrate a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to "engage" the Muslim "world."

The practical effect, however, has been to excuse, empower and embolden those hostile not just to Israel but to the United States, as well. Consider just a few ominous examples:

The Iranian regime has understood that the Obama administration will do nothing to defeat the realization of Tehran’s longstanding ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.  Instead, the United States is now focused on how it will "live with" a nuclear-armed Iran by trying to "contain" it. Meantime, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency says Tehran has enough enriched uranium to make two atomic weapons.  If true, it will be a matter of a relatively short time before such material is sufficiently processed to be ready for that purpose.

The Syrians have, presumably at Iran’s direction and with its help, transferred dangerous Scud missiles to the mullah’s re-armed terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.  Particularly if equipped with chemical or biological weapons (which the Syrians and Iranians have in abundance), such missiles would pose a mortal threat to Israel and her people.

Egypt has recently conducted offensively oriented war games in the Sinai Peninsula. Their clear purpose:  Honing the Egyptian military’s capabilities for renewed attacks on Israel.  The government of Hosni Mubarak has also failed to halt the massive network of smuggling tunnels into Gaza that are supplying another of Iran’s terrorist surrogates, Hamas, with an array of ever-more-deadly weapons in preparation for when (not if) hostilities are resumed with Israel.

Even before last weekend’s conflict over the blockade-running "aid flotilla," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had effectively terminated the close ties Israel once had with his country.  Erdogan’s accelerating Islamicization of the once-secular Turkey has been accompanied by his intensifying rapprochement with Iran and Syria.

Notably, the Turks recently joined Brazil for the transparent purpose of running interference for Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.  It remains to be seen whether these three nations will succeed in sabotaging Team Obama’s latest bid to secure a new UN sanctions resolution against the mullahs.

Last week, a powerful new weapon in the campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State was spawned by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  It mandated negotiations to start in 2012 with the aim of ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons.  Israel was the only nation named.  It would also likely be the only one disarmed if the transnationalists (both the secular UN types and Shariah-adherent ones) have their way.

These developments have two things in common:  First, particularly when taken together, they constitute the greatest existential threat to Israel since 1973.  And second, they reflect– and powerfully reinforce– a growing perception that the United States has cut Israel loose.

Israel’s many friends in this country – particularly a number of American Jews critical to Democratic electoral prospects this fall – finally seem to have awakened to these realities.  Hence, Team Obama’s feverish effort last week to have the President seen with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man it had humiliatingly spurned and publicly upbraided just a few months ago. (Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to head home to deal with the Flotilla crisis spared both men the obvious PR challenges associated with the former making a Washington visit at this juncture.)

Unfortunately, matters have reached the point where such calculated exercises in Potemkin political rehabilitation will not suffice.  Ditto rhetorical pledges of unseverable bilateral ties.

Unless and until President Obama gives comprehensive and tangible expression to America’s commitment to Israel– in terms of reliable military assistance, unstinting diplomatic support and wide latitude to act in its self-defense– the forces that have been unleashed by him and others will assuredly translate in due course into war.  It is certainly harder to do such prophylactic things today than it would have been at the outset of the Obama presidency.  But such costs are nothing compared to those that will be incurred by freedom-loving people in the Middle East and elsewhere, including here, if he fails to undertake these necessary course-corrections.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program "Secure Freedom Radio" heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

Ending Israel’s losing streak

These words are being written before the dust has had a chance to settle on Monday night’s naval commando raid of the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid’s full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least ten Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF’s training for and execution of the mission.

The Navy and other relevant bodies will no doubt study these failures. But they point to a larger strategic failure that has crippled Israel’s capacity to contend with the information war being waged against it. Until this failure is remedied, no after-action investigation, no enhanced training, no new electronic warfare doodad will make a significant impact on Israel’s ability to contend with the next Hamas flotilla that sets sail for Gaza.

In the space of four days, Israel has suffered two massive defeats. A straight line runs between the anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and the Hamas flotilla. And in both cases, Israeli officials voiced "surprise," at these defeats.

Given the months-long build-up to the NPT review conference, and the weeks-long build-up to the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, that surprise cannot be attributed to a lack of information. What it points to rather is a cognitive failure of Israel’s leaders – from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu down – to understand the nature of the war being waged against us. And it is this fundamental failure of cognition that has landed six soldiers in the hospital, Israel’s international reputation in tatters and Israeli spokesmen – from Netanyahu down – searching for a way to describe a reality they do not understand and explain how they will cope with challenges that confound them.

The reality is simple and stark. Israel is the target of a massive information war that is unprecedented in scale and scope. This war is being waged primarily by a massive consortium of the international Left and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The staggering scale of the forces aligned against Israel is demonstrated by two things.

The Hamas abetting Free Gaza website published a list of some 222 organizations that endorsed the terror-supporting flotilla. The listed organizations hail from the four corners of the earth. They include Jewish anti-Israel groups as well as Christian, Islamic and non-religious anti-Israel groups. It is hard to think of any cause other than Israel-bashing that could unite such disparate forces.

The second indicator of the scope of the war against Israel is far more devastating than the list of groups that endorsed the pro-Hamas flotilla. That indicator is the fact that at the UN on Friday, 189 governments of 189 countries came together as one to savage Israel. There is no other issue that commands such unanimity. The NPT review conference demonstrated that the only way the international community will agree on anything is if its members are agreeing that Israel has no right to defend itself. The NPT review conference’s campaign against Israel shows that the 222 organizations supporting Hamas are a reflection of the will of the majority – not a minority – of the nations of the world.

This war against Israel is nothing new. It has been going on since the dawn of modern Zionism 150 years ago. In many ways, it is just the current iteration of the eternal war against the Jewish people.

The Red-Green alliance’s aims are twofold. It seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel’s destruction will become an historic inevitability.

Until US President Barack Obama took office, Israel’s one steady asset in this war was the US. Until last year, the US consistently refused to join the Red-Green alliance because its leaders recognized that the alliance’s campaign against Israel was part and parcel of the Red-Green campaign against US superpower status in the Middle East and throughout the world. Indeed, some US leaders recognized that the Red-Green alliance’s animus towards Israel stemmed from the same source as its rejection of American exceptionalism.

Dismally, what the US’s vote in favor of the NPT review conference’s final anti-Israel and by default pro-Iranian resolution makes clear is that under President Barack Obama, the US is no longer Israel’s reliable ally. Indeed, what the US’s vote shows is that the Obama administration’s ideological preferences place it on the side of the Red-Green alliance against Israel. No amount of backpedalling by the Obama administration can make up the damage caused by its act of belligerence against Israel at the NPT review conference.

If Israel’s leaders were better informed, in the lead-up to the NPT conference they would have recognized a number of things. They would have realized that Obama’s anti-nuclear conference in April, his commitment to a nuclear-free world, as well as his general ambivalence – at best – to US global leadership rendered it all but inevitable that he would turn on Israel at the NPT review conference. The truth is that Egypt’s call for the denuclearization of Israel jibes with Obama’s own repeatedly held views both regarding Israel and regarding the US’s own nuclear arsenal.

Armed with this basic understanding of Obama’s inclinations, Israel should have taken for granted that the NPT conference would target Israel. Consequently, in months preceding the conference, Israel should have stated loudly and consistently that as currently constituted the NPT serves as the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation rather than the central instrument for preventing nuclear proliferation it was supposed to be. North Korea exploited its status as an NPT signatory to develop its nuclear arsenal. Today Iran exploits its status as an NPT signatory to develop nuclear weapons. Unless the NPT is fundamentally revised it will continue to serve as the primary instrument for nuclear proliferation.

Had this been Israel’s position, it would have been able to undercut US arguments in favor of signing onto the anti-Israel final resolution. So too, such a position would have prepared Israel to cogently explain its rejection of the final resolution without sounding hypocritical.

And that is the thing of it. The Red-Green alliance’s aim at the NPT conference was to discredit Israel’s deterrent capacity while delegitimizing its right to take preemptive action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now, due to Israel’s failure to make its case against the NPT in the months leading up to the conference, as Israel’s enemies use the US-supported final resolution to claim that Israel’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program is hypocritical, Israel lacks a cognitive framework for responding.

The fact that Israel still doesn’t get the point is made clear by the government’s response to the decision. Israel’s denunciation of the resolution makes no mention of the fact that the NPT regime itself has become the chief institutional enabler of nuclear proliferation today. So too, disastrously, in a clear bid to pretend away Obama’s treachery, Israel actually applauded Obama for emptily criticizing the resolution he voted for. This Israeli response compounds the damage and ensures that the assault will continue and grow stronger.

As to the flotilla, the challenge it presented Israel was nothing new. Israel has been confronted by suicide protestors for a decade now. The fact that these pro-Hamas activists intended to commit suicide in order to discredit Israel on camera was made clear by the fact that the Turkish organizers named the lead ship Rachel Corrie – after the most famous pro-Hamas suicide protestor.

So too, the fact that Israeli forces boarding the ships would be met by trenchant, violent opposition was knowable simply by looking at Turkey’s role in the operation. First of all, the Turkish government-supported NGO behind the operation is IHH. As the US government, the Turkish government in the 1990s, the Investigative Project on Terrorism and countless other sources have proven, the IHH is a terrorist organization. It has direct links to al Qaida and Hamas. Its members have been involved in terrorist warfare from Chechnya and Bosnia to Iraq and Israel. The notion that IHH organizers would behave like radical leftist anti-Israel demonstrators on university campuses is simply ridiculous.

Moreover, there is Turkey’s behavior to consider. Since Obama took office, Turkey’s gradual slide into the Iranian axis has sped up considerably. Turkey’s leading role in the flotilla, and the Erdogan government’s ostentatious embrace of IHH which just a decade ago Turkey banned from earthquake relief efforts in light of its violent, jihadist mission made clear that the Erdogan regime would use the violence on board the ships as a way to strike a strategic blow at Israel’s international standing.

In view of all of this, it is clear that Israel’s information strategy for contending with the flotilla was ill-conceived. Rather than attack Turkey for its facilitation of terrorism, and openly prepare charge sheets against the flotilla’s organizers, crew and passengers for their facilitation of terrorism in breach of both Israeli domestic law and international law, Israel’s information efforts were largely concentrated on irrelevancies. Israeli officials detailed all the humanitarian assistance Israel has provided Hamas-controlled Gaza. They spoke of the Navy’s commitment to use non-lethal force to take over the ships.

And now, in the aftermath of the lethal takeover of the flotilla, Israel’s leaders stammer. Rather than demand an apology from the Turkish government for its support for these terrorists, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called his Turkish counterpart to talk over what happened. Rather than demand restitution for the terrorist assault against Israeli troops, Israel has defended its troops’ moral training in non-violent crowd control.

These efforts are worse than worthless. They make Israel appear whiny rather than indignant. And more depressingly, they expose a dangerous lack of basic comprehension about what has just occurred and a concomitant inability to prepare for what will most certainly follow

Israel is the target of a massive information war. For Israel to win this war it needs to counter its enemies’ lies with the truth.

The NPT has been subverted by the very forces it was created to prevent from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization ideologically indistinguishable from al Qaida. International law requires all states and non-state actors to take active measures to defeat it.

Israel is the frontline of the free world. Its ability to defend itself and deter its foes is the single most important guarantee of international peace and security in the world. A strong Israel is also the most potent and reliable guarantor of the US’s continued ability to project its power in the Middle East.

This is the unvarnished truth. It is also the beginning of a successful Israel campaign to defang and neutralize the massive coalition of nuclear proliferation- and terrorism- abettors aligned against it. But until our leaders finally recognize the nature of the war being waged against our country, these basic facts will remain ignored as Israel moves from one stunning defeat to the next.  

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Netanyahu, Obama’s newest prop

The Democratic Party is feeling the heat for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. In an interview with Channel 10 earlier this month, Democratic Party mega-donor Haim Saban characterized the Obama administration as ideologically aligned with the radical Left and harshly criticized its treatment of Israel.

Both Ma’ariv and Yediot Aharonot reported this week that Democratic congressmen and senators are deeply concerned that the administration’s harsh treatment of Israel has convinced many American Jews not to contribute to their campaigns or to the Democratic Party ahead of November 2’s mid-term elections. They also fear that American Jews will vote for Republican challengers in large numbers.

It is these concerns, rather than a decision to alter his positions on Israel specifically and the Middle East generally, that now drive Obama’s relentless courtship of the American Jewish community. His latest move in this sphere was his sudden invitation to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to visit him at the White House for a "warm reception" in front of television cameras next Tuesday.

It is clear that electoral worries rather than policy concerns are behind what the White House has described as a "charm offensive," because since launching this offensive a few weeks ago, Obama not changed any of his policies towards Israel and the wider Middle East. In fact, he has ratcheted up these policies to Israel’s detriment.

TAKE HIS goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. On Friday, the UN’s monthlong Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is scheduled to adopt a consensual resolution before adjourning. According to multiple media reports, Israel is set to be the focus of the draft resolution that will likely be adopted.

The draft resolutions being circulated by both Egypt and the US adopt Egypt’s demand for a nuclear-free Middle East. They call for a conference involving all countries in the region to discuss denuclearization. The only difference between the Egyptian draft and the US draft on the issue is that the Egyptians call for the conference to be held in 2011 while the US calls for the convening of the conference in 2012-2013. The draft resolution also calls for all states that are not members of the NPT – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – to join the NPT as non-nuclear powers.

So while Iran is not mentioned in the draft resolution – which must be adopted by consensus – in two separate places, Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal is the target of an international diplomatic stampede.

In 2005, Egypt circulated a draft resolution that was substantively identical to its current draft. But in stark contrast to today’s conclave, the NPT review conference in 2005 ended without agreement, because the Bush administration refused to go along with Egypt’s assault on Israel.

Particularly in light of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the Iranian regime’s expressed goal of destroying Israel, the Bush administration preferred to scuttle the conference rather than give any credence to the view that Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal is a greater threat to global security than Iran’s nuclear program – which, as in today’s draft, wasn’t mentioned in Egypt’s resolution five years ago. The Obama administration has no problem going along with Cairo.

Obama’s willingness to place Israel’s nuclear program on the international agenda next to Iran’s is par for the course of his utterly failed policy for contending with Iran’s nuclear program. After his diplomatic open hand policy towards Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was met with a clenched fist, Obama’s attempt to convince the UN Security Council to pass "smart sanctions" against Iran has been checkmated by Iran’s nuclear deal with its newest strategic allies, Turkey and Brazil.

That deal, which facilitates rather than impedes Teheran’s nuclear weapons program, has ended any prospect that the Security Council will pass an additional sanctions resolution against Iran in the near future. But then, in order to secure the now weakened Russian support for his sanctions resolution, Obama exempted Russia from the sanctions and turned a blind eye to continued Russian and Chinese nuclear proliferation activities in Syria, Turkey and Pakistan. Furthermore, Obama agreed to make most of the remaining provisions non-binding.
In the meantime, and in spite of the fact that his sanctions bid is in shambles, Obama has asked congressional Democrats to stall their sanctions bills for another month. So, too, Obama prevailed on his Democratic colleagues in Congress to exempt Russia and China from their sanctions bills.

AS PART of the administration’s attempt to woo American Jews back into the Democratic Party fold despite its anti-Israel policies, last week a group of pre-selected pro-Obama rabbis was invited to the White House for talks with Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and with Dan Shapiro and Dennis Ross, who hold the Palestinian and Iran dossiers on Obama’s National Security Council, respectively. According to a report of the meeting by Rabbi Jack Moline that has not been refuted by the White House, the three men told the Democratic rabbis that the administration has three priorities in the Middle East. First Obama seeks to isolate Iran.

Second, he seeks to significantly reduce the US military presence in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. And third, he seeks to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

These priorities are disturbing for a number of reasons. First, isolating Iran is not the same as preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. By characterizing its goal as "isolating" Iran, the administration makes clear that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is not its goal. Moreover, as Iran’s deal with Brazil and Turkey makes abundantly clear, Iran is not isolated. Indeed, its foreign relations have prospered since Obama took office.

In his write-up of the meeting, Moline indicated that Ross and Emanuel view Obama’s rejection of Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem as motivated by his goal of isolating Iran. So in the view of Obama’s Jewish advisers, his preferred method of isolating Iran is to attack Israel.

Add that to his third priority of establishing a Palestinian state by the end of next year and you have a US president for whom bashing Israel is his first and third priority in the Middle East.
When one factors in his willingness to put Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal on the international chopping block, it is clear that there is no precedent for Obama’s hostility towards Israel in the history of US-Israel relations.

THIS BRINGS us to Obama’s meeting next Tuesday with Netanyahu. Obama’s continued commitment to his anti-Israel policies indicates that there are two possible scenarios for next week’s meeting. In the best case, the meeting will have no substance whatsoever. It will be nothing more than a public display of presidential affection for the Israeli premier.

The more likely scenario is that Obama will use the meeting as an opportunity to pressure Netanyahu not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations; not to attack Hizbullah’s and Syria’s missile depots, launchers and silos; and to extend the prohibition on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria beyond its September deadline and expand the prohibition to Jewish home construction in Jerusalem.

Regarding the latter scenario, it can only be hoped that Netanyahu has learned from his previous experiences with Obama. In December, in the hopes of alleviating US pressure, Netanyahu announced an unprecedented 10-month ban on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. For his efforts, Netanyahu was rewarded with an escalation of American pressure against Israel.

After he pocketed Netanyahu’s concession on Judea and Samaria, Obama immediately launched his poisonous assault on Israeli rights to Jerusalem.

Likewise, Netanyahu’s willingness to outwardly support both Obama’s effort to appease Iran and his efforts to pass anti-Iran sanctions in the Security Council gained Obama a year and a half of quiet from Jerusalem. During that time, Iran has moved within months of the bomb and the US has abandoned its goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This experience has one clear lesson: If Obama seeks policy concessions from Israel during their meeting, Netanyahu must reject his entreaties. In fact, it may even be counterproductive for Netanyahu to abstain from responding in the hopes of buying time.

If on the other hand, Obama avoids discussion of substantive issues and devotes his meeting with Netanyahu to a discussion of Michelle Obama’s war on obesity, Netanyahu should consider what Obama did to the family of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl while the president signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act last week.

Pearl was decapitated in 2002 by jihadists in Pakistan. Among other things, his killers claimed he had no right to live because he was Jewish. At the ceremony, Obama barred Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, from speaking. In so doing Obama reduced Daniel Pearl’s family to the status of mere props as Obama vapidly and reprehensibly proclaimed, "Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is."

This appropriation of Pearl’s murder and denial of what it represented served Obama’s purpose of pretending that there is no jihad and that radical Islam is not a threat to the US. And by silencing Pearl’s father, the president turned him into an unwilling accomplice.

Netanyahu should take two lessons from Obama’s behavior at the ceremony. First, Netanyahu must do everything he can to avoid being used as a prop. This means that he should insist on having a joint press briefing with Obama. He must also insist on having a say regarding which journalists will be included in the press pool and who will be permitted to ask the two leaders questions.

Second, Netanyahu must not become Obama’s spokesman. As part of his unsuccessful bid to convince Obama to change his policies towards Israel, Netanyahu and his advisers have gone on record praising Obama for his support for Israel. These statements have stymied attempts by Israel’s US supporters to pressure Obama to change those policies.

The Israeli official who has been most outspoken in his praise for Obama and his denial that Obama’s policies are hostile towards Israel has been Ambassador Michael Oren. Oren has repeatedly praised Obama for his supposedly firm support for Israel and commitment to Israel’s security – most recently in an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday. Moreover, according to eyewitness reports, in a recent closed-door meeting with American Jews, Oren criticized the Republican Party for attacking Obama for his animosity towards Israel.

This quite simply has to end. As foreign officials, Israeli diplomats should not be involved in US partisan politics. Not only should Israeli officials not give Obama undeserved praise, they should not give Republicans undeserved criticism.

At the end of the day, American Jews have the luxury of choosing between their loyalty to the Democratic Party and their support for Israel. And in the coming months, they will choose.
The government of Israel has no such luxury. The government’s only duty is to secure Israel and advance Israel’s national interests in every way possible. Netanyahu must not permit Obama’s public relations campaign to divert him from this mission.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Reclaiming our language from the Left

Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.

The expressed aim of the flotilla’s organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas – an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incognito for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.

Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the "Free Gaza" movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.

IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas’s jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain’s Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

The League of Nations’ letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler’s Europe.

In the aftermath of the war, the British maintained their prohibition on Jewish immigration. To fight this British policy, the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel organized the Aliya Bet program of illegal immigration. Jewish agents scoured the world for ships large enough to bring Europe’s Jewish refugees to the land of Israel.

The ship most emblematic of the era was the Exodus. The Exodus which set sail from France in July 1947 with 4,515 Jewish Holocaust survivors on board was the Zionist response to a new British policy to force illegal immigrant ships to return to Europe.

The British rammed the Exodus in Haifa. They boarded and killed three Jewish defenders. They then forced its passengers to board British prison ships that would return them to Europe. French authorities denied the ships the right to land in France, so the British sailed on to Hamburg, Germany, where the refugees were forced to disembark.

The international outcry against Britain in the wake of the Exodus affair shamed London into cancelling its new policy. It also paved the way for Israel’s independence 10 months later.

Now the Turkish, Greek, Swedish and Irish governments are colluding with Hamas to purloin the imagery of the Exodus and the heroism of the Jewish people in the years leading up to statehood and project that imagery onto a terrorist organization that seeks to complete Hitler’s work. They further seek to invert reality by portraying Israel, which in accordance with international law is trying to contain and defeat Hamas, as a combination of the German Nazis and the British imperialists.

SO FAR, they are getting away with it. So far, for their efforts on behalf of a genocidal terrorist organization Erdogan and his ilk are being extolled as human rights champions. Barring any unexpected events, Israel will suffer yet another public relations disaster on Thursday when the ships approach Gaza.

How has this happened? How is it that we have become so overwhelmed by the Left’s propaganda that most of our political leaders and intellectual elite are incapable of even describing the evil that is being advanced against us?

Over the past generation, the Left has commandeered our language. It has inverted the terminology of human rights, freedom, morality, heroism, democracy and victimization. Its perversion of language has made it nearly impossible for members of democratic, human rights respecting, moral societies to describe the threats they face from their human rights destroying, genocidal, tyrannical enemies. Thanks to the efforts of the international Left, the latter are championed as the victims of those they seek to annihilate.

Two incidents in recent weeks make clear just how disastrous the Left’s wholesale theft of language and through it, their inversion of reality has been for Israel.

Last Monday, Noam Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge and requested a visa to enter Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The police at the border refused his request. The radical leftist Israel-basher made a fuss and waited around for several hours before he went back to Jordan.

Chomsky left Jordan at the end of the week and travelled to Lebanon. For the second time in four years, on Friday Chomsky toured southern Lebanon with a Hizbullah guide. Now an official guest of Hizbullah, Chomsky is scheduled to give an address in Beirut Tuesday to celebrate the IDF’s pullout from south Lebanon 10 years ago.

As David Hornik detailed in FrontPage Magazine on Friday, the leftist-dominated Israeli media went nuts when they discovered Chomsky had been turned away at the border. Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz heralded Chomsky as a great mind and proclaimed hysterically that the refusal to allow him to enter the country marked the end of Israeli democracy and the start of a slide into fascism. The Western media quickly piled on and within hours Israel’s right to deny its avowed enemies entry was under assault.
And Chomsky is Israel’s enemy. As Hornik pointed out, Chomsky has repeatedly defended Holocaust deniers while accusing Israel of being the ideological heir of Nazi Germany. When he hasn’t been too busy championing the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin, and attacking the US as the Great Satan, Chomsky has devoted much time and energy to calling for Israel’s eradication and defending Palestinian and Hizbullah terrorists.

IT WAS the government’s job to point this out. But instead, faced with the leftist onslaught against its right to control its borders, the government crumpled. Instead of explaining that Chomsky is an enemy of Israel and an abettor and defender of genocide, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev apologized for the unpleasant reception Chomsky received at the Allenby Bridge. Regev also promised that if Chomsky returns, he will be granted an entry visa.

The government’s cowardly handling of the Chomsky incident is testament to the Left’s success at intimidating Western leaders to the point where instead of standing up to leftist propaganda and lies, they accept them as truth and even collaborate in disseminating them.

Probably the folks in the Prime Minister’s Office figured no one would listen if they told the truth about Chomsky. They probably felt that defending the decision to bar Chomsky from the country would only elicit a second barrage of media attacks.

And perhaps they were right. But the fact that the Left would have remained unconvinced doesn’t excuse the government’s abject surrender of the truth about Chomsky to Israel’s enemies on the Left who portray the MIT professor as a human rights activist and a great intellectual humanitarian. As David Horowitz and Peter Collier prove in their book The Anti-Chomsky Reader, there doesn’t seem to be a tyrant that Chomsky hasn’t championed or a victim that Chomsky hasn’t demonized in the entire span of his 50-year career as a radical activist.

The government is not alone in its fear of exposing and fighting the Left’s campaign to demonize the country.

THE RADICAL Left’s ability to block voices of dissent from its anti-Israel and anti-freedom positions was similarly demonstrated two weeks ago at Tel Aviv University’s annual Board of Governors meeting.
For several years, a large, vocal group of tenured professors from the university have actively participated in the international campaign to boycott Israeli universities and academics while actively supporting Hamas and Hizbullah. That is, many Tel Aviv University professors, whose salaries are paid by university donors and Israeli taxpayers, have been using their university titles to undermine the university and to advance the cause of Israel’s destruction.

This year the university’s Board of Governors bestowed an honorary doctorate on Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz. In his acceptance speech, Dershowitz called these professors out for their vile behavior and named three of the most vocal enemies of the university and Israel on the international stage: Profs. Anat Matar, Rachel Giora and Shlomo Sand.

The university’s tenured anti-Zionist activists were quick to retaliate. Forty-six professors signed a letter to university president Joseph Klaffter demanding that the university disassociate itself from Dershowitz’s statements.

Klaffter was quick to oblige. At the Board of Governors meeting, Klaffter silenced board member Mark Tanenbaum when he tried to put forward a resolution calling for disciplinary action against university professors who use their university titles to defame the university or Israel. Klaffter, who isn’t even a member of the Board of Governors, reportedly grabbed the microphone away from Tanenbaum and adjourned the meeting. Klaffter justified his physical denial of Tanenbaum’s freedom of speech by claiming that he was defending academic freedom.

Like the Prime Minister’s Office’s apology to Noam Chomsky, Klaffter’s action – aside from arguably being prohibited by his own university’s constitution – was further proof of the Left’s success in appropriating the language and imagery of freedom and tolerance in the service of forces that seek to destroy freedom and end tolerance.

ON THURSDAY Hamas’s maritime enablers from Europe, Turkey and beyond will arrive at our doorstep. The navy will block their entry to Gaza. Israel will be demonized by terror-abettors disguised as human rights activists and journalists worldwide. And the story will pave the way for the next assault on Israel’s right to exist.

This endless circle of demonization and aggression will continue to widen and escalate until our political leaders and our intellectual elite reclaim our language from those on the terror-abetting Left. True, our reclamation of our language will not go unopposed. But if we do not reassert our right to describe objective reality, our inability to explain why we are right and our detractors serve evil will be our undoing.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

South Korea, North Korea, Israel & Iran

On Thursday the South Korean government did something important. It told the truth about North Korean aggression. On March 26, a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean naval corvette with a torpedo. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the unprovoked attack. And on May 20, the South Koreans ended all ambiguity about the nature of the attack and placed the blame where it belongs.

In its write-up of South Korea’s statement, The Los Angeles Times assessed that South Korea’s acknowledgment of North Korea’s murderous aggression will return the region to the days of the Cold War. The paper quoted Prof. Kim Keun-sik from Kyungnam University outside Seoul claiming that in the period to come, North Korea and China will face off against South Korea and the US.

Sadly for South Korea, while China can be depended upon to block the passage of effective sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council and to take any other necessary action to protect the North Korean regime, South Korea cannot expect the US to take action to rein in North Korean aggression. For while the South Korean government acknowledged reality on Thursday morning, the US under President Barack Obama remains in reality denial mode.

It is true that on Thursday Obama released a statement saying that the "act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law." And it is true that the international media is pointing to the White House announcement as an indication that the US will stand with South Korea.

But the Obama administration’s relations with China on the one hand, and its emasculation of the US Navy on the other demonstrate that the US will not defend South Korea against North Korean aggression. The administration’s actions in the days leading up to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announcement make this clear.

Lee reportedly told Obama on Tuesday that his government’s investigation of the attack proved beyond a shred of doubt that North Korea had attacked the ship. Wednesday the State Department announced that next week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be making a weeklong visit to Asia. Clinton’s trip includes one day in Japan, one day in South Korea and five days in China. Clinton’s trip to China will center on advancing the US’s aim of ensuring that China continues to finance the US’s national debt. Given the US’s priorities, it is impossible to imagine the White House taking any forthright action against Pyongyang.

IN A related matter, the Obama administration spent the better part of the week congratulating itself for convincing China and Russia to back another sanctions resolution against North Korea’s ally Iran. In what the administration is presenting as a great diplomatic victory, Beijing and Moscow agreed to back a sanctions resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council for its refusal to end its illicit uranium enrichment.

Unfortunately, Obama’s great achievement will have no impact on Iran. If they are even passed the sanctions outlined in the draft resolution include little in the way of binding provisions. If they are passed, they will have a negligible impact on Iran’s economy and no impact on its nuclear weapons program.

Moreover, Brazil’s and Turkey’s deal to enrich uranium for Iran wrecks any chance that the US will gain its sought-for unanimity in the Security Council against Iran. Even if the sanctions resolution passes, it will be Pyrrhic victory for the US which will have destroyed its credibility as a negotiator with its allies and its enemies alike.

Beyond all that, Thursday we learned that as a payoff for China’s support for its toothless sanctions resolution, the Obama administration has made a deal that enables nuclear proliferation. According to the Washington Post, in exchange for China’s support for the resolution, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to Beijing’s continued nuclear proliferation activities to Pakistan.

Pakistan has been a major source of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies to Iran and North Korea. Yet the administration has reportedly opted not to oppose China’s decision to build two more nuclear reactors in Pakistan.
In its frenetic bid to court China whose dollars it needs to finance its massive increase in federal spending, the Obama administration has downplayed not only China’s nuclear proliferation but North Korea’s nuclear proliferation as well. Last week North Korea announced that it conducted a successful fusion experiment. That is, it announced that it is developing a hydrogen bomb. Rather than condemn the move, the administration dismissed the danger claiming that North Korea was lying.

And just as it makes light of the threat emanating from North Korea, so the US has continued to downplay the threat Iran’s nuclear program poses to US and global security. Due to the US’s failure to end Iran’s uranium enrichment, according to the most optimistic Western assessments, Iran will have enough enriched uranium to produce atomic bombs at will in a matter of months.

If the Turkish-Brazilian uranium enrichment deal with Iran goes through, the timeline will be cut by half. Given the new deal’s similarity to the offer Obama made the Iranians last year, the administration will have great difficulty discrediting it or even providing a coherent explanation for its opposition to the deal.

AS FOREIGN Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted in his trip to Japan earlier in the month, North Korea does not only threaten its immediate neighbors. Through its proliferation activities, and particularly through its close ties to Iran and its Syrian, Hizbullah and Hamas clients, North Korea constitutes a threat to the Middle East and indeed to global security as a whole. It is important for the US’s spurned allies in Tokyo, Seoul and beyond to join forces with Israel to contend with the threats we share – threats which the Obama administration’s diplomatic bungling has only exacerbated.

But while it is true that North Korea’s proliferation activities threaten global security, it is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran. The regime in Pyongyang is evil, but it is mainly motivated by its desire to survive. In contrast, Iran’s regime is openly revolutionary. Its stated aim is to destroy the global order, annihilate Israel and the US and usher in a Shiite messianic era in which Iran will rule the world in the name of Islam.

Depressingly, just as the Iranian threat is greater than the North Korean threat, so the Obama administration’s denial of the nature of the Iranian threat is greater than its denial of the North Korean threat. Quite simply, the Obama administration refuses to believe the ideology which informs the actions of Iran’s rulers is what they say it is. 
In its latest demonstration of its deep denial of the nature of the threat it faces, this week John Brennan, Obama’s chief advisor for counterterrorism and homeland security said that the US must court what he referred to as "moderate elements," in Hizbullah.

Brennan argued that since in addition to its Iranian commanded and supplied military organization and its Iranian commanded and trained international terror network, Hizbullah also has members in the Lebanese government and parliament, it is a group that the Obama administration can do business with.

To the extent that Brennan’s statement echoes the Obama administration’s analysis of Hizbullah, it is simply terrifying.

Hizbullah was established by Iran in 1981. It has a dual mission of serving as the advance guard of Iran’s global Islamic revolution and of spreading the Iranian revolution to Lebanon. Hizbullah’s participation in Lebanese politics is consonant with this mission. It does not in any way indicate a moderation of the organization. Had Brennan looked, he would not have found a single statement by Hizbullah parliamentarians or government ministers that in any way contradicts Hizbullah’s Iranian-dictated missions.

But then, Brennan’s asinine position on Hizbullah is part and parcel of his overall denial of the threat radical Islam poses to the US and to the rest of the world. In a speech at New York University last August, Brennan gave a stirring defense of Islam as a religion of peace. He eschewed any connection between the likes of al Qaida and the Iranian mullahs and Islam and claimed that jihad is a great and good thing.

In his words, "Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal [to describe the cause for which Islamic terrorists fight], risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve."

What Brennan’s statements show is that Obama, who picked Brennan to serve as his chief counterterrorism advisor, is ideologically committed to the notion that Iran and its fellow jihadists are not an inherent threat to the US and its allies. That is, Obama is ideologically committed to the notion that there is no reason to take any action against Iran that could actually prevent the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.

SINCE OBAMA took office nearly a year and a half ago, Israel has agreed to Obama’s demand that it allow him to take the lead on international efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Israel stood back as he wasted a year trying to woo Ahmadinejad often at Israel’s own expense as he linked Iran’s nuclear weapons program to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel has stood back since then as he pushed forward UN sanctions.

And now, a year and a half later, Obama’s sanctions gambit is revealed as a dangerous joke. Iran is months away from the bomb. Hizbullah has an arsenal of guided missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv and beyond. Iran’s diplomatic stature has soared to unprecedented heights as it runs diplomatic circles around Obama and his advisors. And Brennan wants to make a deal with Hizbullah.

South Korea’s acknowledgment of North Korea’s aggression places it on a collision course with the Obama administration which prefers to court Beijing for dollars than deal effectively with Pyongyang’s aggression. Israel has been on a collision course with Washington for a year and a half now as it insists in the face of US opposition that Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to global security today.

Sadly, the US’s ridiculous sanctions resolution and its general diplomatic incompetence make clear is that it is time for Israel to risk escalating its crisis with Obama still further. It is time for Israel to take the lead in the international campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

 

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.